The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne Explains the Whole Grenade at the Oklahoma City Airport Thing

"It's all pretty silly."

Today we bring you some clarification on a story that could have been (but ultimately wasn't) Wayne Coyne's stuntiest stunt yet. Earlier this month, the Flaming Lips frontman tweeted, "Sorry Sorry Sorry!! Everyone that was inconvenienced because of my grenade at the OKC airport!" It seemed like a joke, but yesterday the blog The Lost Ogle posted the first-hand tale of one Oklahoma City Airport traveler, who explained that a grenade in Wayne Coyne's luggage actually did cause the TSA to "lock down the airport."

"All we could see was Wayne standing by the security checkpoint with a bunch of agents around his bag", the traveler said, and posted a cell phone shot of Coyne's back. "Had to spend an extra grand on tickets. Made me miss my flight."

We got Coyne on the phone today to ask him a few questions, namely: Did you really have a grenade with you at the airport? And if so, why the hell did you have a grenade with you at the airport? The answers, while still loony by normal-citizen standards, are more logical and vanilla than you might expect.

"The truth is unfortunately boring," Coyne said. The night before the flight, the band had been up all night at a house party-- "you know, pot and booze and drugs and people playing music until six o'clock in the morning"-- where Coyne picked up a "non-explodable" grenade and took it with him as a souvenir. "It was an actual grenade that was now missing its explosive parts and painted gold. I just threw this gold grenade in my bag and had not quite thought about it."

He was forced to think about it, though, once the airport X-ray machines picked up the grenade and TSA began digging around his bag. "They all believed what I was saying; they all believed it was just a dumb accident," Coyne said, continually referencing the "bureaucracy" of airport security. "The bomb squad guy came out, and once he comes out, there's two weeks of paperwork that has to be filled out. Everybody could immediately tell what it was. But it's too late-- the merry-go-round had to go its whole way around before you could get off."

"They were all very nice to me," he added.

As for the people at the airport who reportedly lost money or time dealing with the ensuing security delays, Coyne is not so remorseful. "I would agree that it was stupid of me, but I don't feel wholly responsible if people missed their flights," he said. "I'm not making the rules. It's not illegal for me to have that grenade with me."

And in response to the Lost Ogle traveler's report, which suggested Coyne drop acid with him and Yoko Ono to make up for the reported $1,000 loss incurred when trying to get new tickets after the airport delays? "That sounds like fun. I can't speak for Yoko, but I would say yes, let's do that."